


Routine Maintenance on Theseus' Ship

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Unwind Dystology - Neal Shusterman
Genre: Existential Angst, Gen, Non-Consensual Body Modification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 19:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7814746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It’s a simple process. We’ll remove the damaged bone and muscle and replace it with a new bone and fresh muscle, as similar as possible, but of course undamaged,” Roberta said. “Standard procedure.”</p>
<p>Or, the one where a gunshot wound forces Cam to question what makes him who he is. Takes place during Unwholly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Routine Maintenance on Theseus' Ship

It had been one of Cam’s better speeches. One of the more original ones, even though at the end of the day he had discovered all the speeches he ever gave at events and press conferences never really added up to anything all that solid. He had thrown in a few metaphors, pop culture references from entirely different sets of interests, and was going to wind it all up as eloquently as his magnificently patch-worked brain and tongue would allow. He expected wild applause.

Instead, he was interrupted halfway through his speech. Not by a shout or general disapproval from the crowd, which would not have been without precedent, but by the retort of a gun.

It was the sound that shocked Cam. Most of his internal community had never heard an actual gunshot, though a few, living in the inner city, were well acquainted with the sound. It rang fiercely in his ears, and it took him a moment to reorient himself, to realize he was lying on his back on the ground, blood seeping through his right shirt sleeve.

He pushed himself up and reached to touch the widening red spot on his sleeve (Roberta would be so mad—it was an expensive suit) when someone grabbed his hand and stopped him. It was Roberta, crouching at his side.

“Don’t touch it.” She turned to a man beside her. “Get the car. We must leave immediately.”

Security guards were already crawling through the crowd, which had grown much louder. Cam tried to get to his feet to see what was going on, but Roberta pushed him down. “Sit. The car will be ready in a minute.”

“Caught my foot in a bear trap,” he said. “Punched in the mouth. Knife slipped.” He could hear his heart beating faster than normal, which wasn’t supposed to happen with all the training he’d been going through to sync it with his body. “Shot,” he gasped.

“Yes, it hurts,” Roberta said. “Calm down. We’ll have an anesthetic in just a moment. My brave boy can take the pain, right?”

It was so hard to tell with Roberta whether she was concerned about Cam the person or Camus the merchandise. But her voice was comforting and her face was calm, so Cam nodded and waited, keeping as still as possible.

///…///…///

The wound wasn’t life threatening. The doctors back at the base stitched up the entry wound fairly easily after removing the bullet, and with some painkillers Cam couldn’t feel it at all. But it wasn’t a simple in and out wound either, and they wouldn’t let him get out of bed.

“The bullet hit bone and fractured it,” Roberta told Cam. “Not to mention it ripped through a lot of arm muscle. It could take more than four months to fully heal.”

Cam nodded thoughtfully. He hadn’t had any serious injuries since being assembled. Parts of him thought that was a ridiculously long amount of time, especially since until then he wouldn’t have full usage of his arm. Other parts of him thought it was not surprising, and he chose to side with those ones. “I’m a controversial public figure, and a lot of people hate me. I knew they’d try to hurt me.” Although he hadn’t realized just how determined they’d be. “I guess I’m lucky to be alive.”

Roberta snorted. “Idiot zealots. You can’t let their hatred get to you, Camus. All men are jealous of that which is greater than them, that which they do not understand.”

“Yes, I know.” He had never taken offense at those who hated him. Half the people in his internal community would have hated him, but at the end of the day, they were still good people. He loved humanity, even though in so many ways it was behind. But still, that they would reject him enough to wish he was dead. That stung a little. He sighed. “I want to see Risa.”

Roberta pressed her lips together. Before Risa came, she would have been the one he went to for comfort. But it had been her idea for Cam and Risa to bond, so Cam didn’t see how she could complain. At last she said, “I will have her brought here. In the meantime, rest.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He saluted her with his left hand as she walked away.

Risa came by a few hours later. He wondered if the delay was because Roberta had wanted him to wait (delayed gratification wasn’t her usual brand of manipulation, but she had used it in the past) or because Risa hadn’t really wanted to see him, even with his injury. He decided to believe it was the first.

“Hi Risa,” he said. “Have you ever tried painkillers? I think they have me on morphine. It’s pretty nice.”

“For my surgery, yes,” Risa said. She took a close look at his arm, though Cam wasn’t sure how much she could tell about it through the bandaging. “They fixed it up pretty well.”

“We have excellent doctors here. They helped to piece me together, and now they help to keep me together,” Cam said. He smiled a winning smile as he said it, but Risa didn’t seem too impressed.

“Roberta said someone shot you.”

Cam shrugged. “They didn’t hit anything vital.” He wondered what they’d been aiming for—his heart, a single organ from a track star Unwind? Or his head, with the patchwork brain of geniuses? Most of the activists who hated him were against unwinding, but if they loved unwinds and wanted to protect them, why did they want to hurt Cam? Even Risa wouldn’t have gone that far, even when she first got here and hated his guts. It was a failure in logic, and he was sure they would have to see reason in time.

Risa had been silent for a while, so Cam said, “They say I’ll get back full functionality in the arm in a few short months.”

“And they’ll just let you recover like that? The old fashioned way?” Risa raised an eyebrow.

He considered the matter. “They probably have excellent physical therapy. There might be a little further surgery. We do have an excellent medical facility.”

The door opened behind Risa and Roberta came in. “Oh, Camus. Risa came by to see you after all.” She joined Risa at his bedside. “I’ve been talking to Doctor Simmons and we think we have a solution for your arm.”

Risa gave Cam a look. Cam smiled, acknowledging that she had been right after all. He never minded Risa being right. She was very smart.

“What’s the treatment?” he asked.

“It’s a simple process. We’ll remove the damaged bone and muscle and replace it with a new bone and fresh muscle, as similar as possible, but of course undamaged,” Roberta said. “Standard procedure.”

Cam stared at her.

“You can keep the same skin tone,” Roberta said comfortingly. “And physical therapy could take a while for your internal community to adjust to the difference but it should still be faster than allowing the wound to simply heal.”

“And of course efficiency is all that matters,” Risa said brightly. Cam winced.

“There’s no reason, with our resources, to allow Cam to suffer for months,” Roberta said. “You were something of a medic, I believe. You should respect pain.”

Cam waved his left arm to interject. “Um, red light.”

Roberta paused and turned back to Cam. “Yes, Camus?”

“Mission abort.”

Risa’s forehead wrinkled.

Roberta smiled in the way that meant she wasn’t actually happy with him but of course she would understand anything he had to say. “You don’t want the procedure.”

“Bingo. Bulls-eye. Guessed the lucky number.”

“And is there a reason you can give?”

“I don’t want to receive any parts from Unwinds that I don’t already have,” Cam said, relaxing a little now that Roberta was listening. “We can wait for me to heal naturally.”

Roberta said, “Nature can be over-valued. There’s nothing wrong with using modern technology to help you. You of all people should know that using parts from Unwinds is a legitimate medical practice.”

“He said he didn’t want the transplant,” Risa cut in. “Are you going to force him to get it anyway?”

Like Risa had been forced to get a spine transplant. Someday Cam was going to figure out what exactly had made Risa decide to cooperate. Someday soon.

“Miss Ward, please remove yourself from the room,” Roberta said. “I want to talk to Camus alone.”

“So you can get him where you want him.”

“He’s distressed,” Roberta said. “You are not helping him by being here. You can visit him again later.” She gestured towards the door. “I’m sure he’ll be delighted to see you then.”

“Stay,” Cam said.

Roberta gave him a look. She said to Risa, “Leave.”

Risa left. Not without a backward look, but still. Cam made fists in his blankets. Of course she had listened to Roberta rather than him. After all, she had no problem seeing Roberta as a real person.

“Rabbits die of loneliness,” he said quietly. “Left holding someone else’s umbrella.”

“She’ll be back later,” Roberta said. “Once we’ve discussed your reluctance to go through with this procedure. It’s perfectly safe and not even that advanced.”

Cam shook his head.

“Has Risa Ward been influencing you with her ideas about Unwind parts?” Roberta asked. “Really, Cam. You know she was part of an extremist group before coming here. Of course she’s biased.”

“It’s not about Risa,” Cam said.

Roberta gave him a long look. “I’d be willing to believe you if you’d explain what exactly it was instead.”

Cam bit his lip. Roberta would probably listen if he told her about his memories of being unwound, his fear of the process, the sense of violation it entailed. But he had been ignoring that for a long time, and he knew it wasn’t the real issue. Otherwise he wouldn’t even have been able to cope with his own existence from day to day.

Instead he said, “Theseus’ ship.”

Roberta said, “Ah. You don’t want any of you replaced.”

“They all say I’m made of scrap parts, but I’m not,” Cam said. “This is me.”

He gestured to his whole body. At first he had seen himself as Frankenstein’s monster, each little bit stolen and artificially sewn together. But he had learned to own his limbs, his mismatched hair, the freckled skin sometimes directly against a smooth tan, the pale white patches against bronzed brown. He had learned to see even the seams as birthmarks, faded now but still vaguely there. It was all his. The pieces were not individual—they mattered to the whole.

He swallowed.  “If we start replacing little pieces, when does the part that is me disappear?”

“It is all you,” Roberta said. “You are an accumulation, and more than that.” She squeezed his left shoulder. “I can promise you switching out some bone and muscle won’t change the incredible person you are.”

“When?” Cam said. “When is Theseus’ ship no longer the same ship?”

“I can’t say exactly when,” Roberta said. “But considerably after replacing the first board.”

“I’m not a ship,” Cam said. “I’m not a robot. You can’t pull out my boards. You can’t switch out my gears.” He swallowed. “I don’t get upgrades.”

“Pinocchio again?” Roberta said.

Cam shrugged.

She kissed the top of his head. “I can promise you, Camus Comprix. You are already a very real boy. And I’m proud of you.” She leaned back again. “I’d be even more proud of you if you did the procedure. It would be very brave, and it wouldn’t change anything about who you are.”

“I like this arm.”

“Cam,” Roberta said. “Proactive Citizenry will be very annoyed if we allow something like this to get us off schedule. And if people hear you’re refusing parts from Unwinds, it could easily be taken the wrong way. You don’t want the organization to get mad at you, do you?”

Underneath the concern, he could hear a touch of steel. Proactive Citizenry had put the little patchwork doll together, and they could rip him apart any time they chose. And they might easily do so, if he objected to them replacing a bit of his cotton stuffing.

“I want the same skin tone,” he said.

“That’s easily done,” Roberta said.

“And I don’t want this to happen again.”

Roberta smiled. “Perhaps you should try to avoid getting shot.”

///…///…///

It was a quick surgery, as they had promised. And when he came out, he barely needed the painkillers, although he accepted them.

He could feel his arm as if it were still the same arm, the same nerve tissue and muscle and bone as ever. His brain processed it the same, even though he knew it wasn’t. It would have slightly different muscle memory, slightly different strength and tone, no matter how similar. And it would not have the scar he had earned with the gunshot wound, though perhaps that was the best. Chicks dug scars, some part of his brain reminded him, but he had more than enough oddities about his appearance already.

When the bandages came off only a week or so later, his arm looked and felt about the same as ever, although he still had some physical therapy to do.

The first time Risa came by after the bandages were off, she looked sad.

“Is something wrong?” he asked her.

“I know he wasn’t just unwound,” she said, resting a hand on the new section of his arm. “Still, it makes you want to mourn.”

He liked the feeling of her hand on his arm. He could almost pretend that was how she thought of it—his arm, not just a new piece of patchwork, not a chunk of muscle, skin and bone that still really belonged to its previous owner. He could almost pretend her intense gaze was admiration.

But he shrugged her hand off his arm. “All of me is made of unwound material, Risa. Do you mourn me too?”

She glanced up from his arm, looked him in the eyes. “Sometimes.”

He couldn’t tell, even now, whether she saw him when she looked at his eyes or just some nameless donor. He swallowed. “I’m a whole person. I don’t need your mourning.” He touched the new section on his arm. “And this is mine.”

Risa shook her head. “You can’t pretend it doesn’t affect you. You didn’t want the surgery either.”

“Little boy hiding under his blankets,” Cam said. “Refusing to eat celery because of the strings.”

Risa blinked.

Sometimes (and he hated himself for it) he wished she could be a little bit more like Roberta. A bit more understanding. “It was childish,” he translated. “I got over it.”

“It was noble. You’re being childish now, pretending it doesn’t bother you.”

“I’m seeing things the way they are,” Cam said. “Accepting them.”

Risa shook her head. “You’ll never be a real person as long as you allow yourself to be Proactive Citizenry’s puppet.”

Cam crossed his arms.

“Treat your arm well,” Risa said, and she walked out.

He wanted to call her back. He wanted to explain to her that he couldn’t change what he was made of, couldn’t take offense at something as simple as replaced stuffing, partly wanted to but couldn’t. Mourning. Was that what he was supposed to do all today? Was he supposed to wear only black and live only for those who came before him? Refuse to forge an identity for himself? At least Roberta and his fans saw him as a single, living person. Risa seemed to want to rip him back into his component parts because of moral qualms.

It made Cam shiver. Theseus’ ship might not have been the same ship at the end of the day, but at least it was still a ship, not a pile of boards. He had been brought unnaturally into this world, but he was here now, and if the ship should never have been built, he still intended to prove it sea worthy.

**Author's Note:**

> The Ship of Theseus is a common paradox. Google it. The basics are that Theseus had a ship. Over time the planks were replaced one by one as they rotted, and eventually none of the original planks are left. Is it the same ship? If not, when did that change?  
> Also I love Cam more than any other character in the series except possibly Lev, although I've only read up to Unsouled. No spoilers if you comment, please. But please do comment or leave kudos below. :)


End file.
